Episode 3215

- [Narrator] The Arts and Crafts style movement focused on combining nature with architecture. Gardens were designed to be an extension of the living space. Troy Marden tours a grand residential garden, designed by the famed Southern designer Ryan Gainey, truly wonderful. Marty DeHart profiles Illicium, one of the few evergreen shrubs native to the southeastern US, a great performer you'll want for your landscape. Stay tuned. A garden room, with its symmetry and shades of green, can have restorative powers for the soul.

- About 22 years ago, Caesar Stair began creating a garden, here in Knoxville, Tennessee. And we're grateful for you having us here this morning to share your world with us. Thank you so much.

- Well, happy to have you and glad to be here, and the sun's out, and it's another great day.

- It's another beautiful day. So the garden started in this space that we're standing in, and actually began with your pool house. But you had a gentleman who became involved with this project. So tell me a little bit about how all that started.

- Well, it really started, we were working on a project over at Lakeshore Park. It was a mental health hospital, and we wanted to have a garden over there. And so we kept hearing the name, who's the best gardener in the South, designer and so forth, and we kept hearing the name Ryan Gainey.

- Sure.

- He's the designer, go-to designer, and so I called him up, and I said, "Ryan, I'm Caesar Stair, would you mind, we're working on a mental health hospital, turning it into a park, would you mind coming up and looking at it for possibly a garden here at the park?" And he said, "No." I said, "Well, would you mind staying in our house because we don't have any money?" And he said, "No, I don't mind, but do you mind if I bring five Jack Russell Terriers?" That sounds like Ryan.

- Yeah, so he came up with his five Jack Russell Terriers, and he worked with an architect, Mark Mosley. Long story, we got him up here. We walked around Lakeshore for a day, and that night we had dinner in the dining room. And he said, "Say, I noticed you got a big hole out there in the side yard. Are you building a pool?" I said, "Well, very observant, yes we are." And he said, "Indoor or outdoor?" I said, "Indoor." He said, "You got plans for it?" And I said, "Yes." He said, "Do you mind if we look at 'em?" I said, "No." So we cleared off the dining room table, laid out the plans, and then just pure Ryan, "No, you can't do that."

- You can't do that. This is all wrong.

- "This is all wrong. This is what you need to do." And so that began a relationship, a wonderful relationship. We basically gave Ryan a blank canvas to design this garden, 'cause I certainly didn't know anything about gardens. But I recognized, the one thing I give myself credit for is recognizing what a true talent and what an aesthetic vision for beauty that Ryan had.

- Yeah, he did.

- He's a great, great loss.

- Yeah, and you have kind of an Arts and Crafts style house, so he helped bring about an Arts and Crafts style garden.

- [Caesar] Yeah, he taught us that the garden should be an extension of the house. It's really a part of the house. The house is part of the garden, and that it should fit together.

- [Troy] So we're standing here, looking at your pool house and pavilion. And this space has a very room-like feel to it. And I'm assuming that that is by design.

- [Caesar] Absolutely, absolutely. One of the things that Ryan told us is that, "You don't know anything about gardens, you need to go to the Cotswolds." And I remember going to the Cotswolds, and went to Hidcote first, and walked in there and say, "Oh my gosh."

- Right.

- How long have they been doing this? And my wife looks at me and says, "Well, you know, a couple thousand years probably." But what it taught me was they do the room gardening. I mean, you move from room to room.

- Room to room.

- In a garden. And that was what Ryan was doing here. So when you start from the driveway, we've got sort of an asymmetrical garden right down below the steps. And then here we call this the pool garden. And it's very symmetrical. And then he put in the six boxwoods, which all line up. He put in the two crepe myrtles there, and then the four Ilex, and really surround the Ilex with a variegated box at the base. So it's all very, very symmetrical. And there's something about the symmetry, when you're sitting up in the pavilion and looking over this that's very, very calm and restorative, and just sort of recharge your batteries.

- [Troy] Right, it's also, this part of the garden also is very green and it's shades of green. And I think we forget sometimes that green is also a color, and there's so many things that you can do, just peaceful, and calm, and quiet with these beautiful shades of green color.

- Yeah, Ryan was not into a lot of bright colors. And so we try to select here cool colors, the purples, the blues, the whites. One of the things that we like to do is, my wife used to always say, I practiced law for a long time, and I'd come home and she said, "Oh, he's full of that downtown venom." So we'd get a cold beverage, so to speak, and come out and walk and sit here and just, it just.

- Let the day sort of fade away.

- Let the poison go out and take in, and just get your soul restored.

- I completely understand.

- It's that restorative feeling that this symmetry, we wondered for a long time, what was it that made, evoked this feeling of such calmness and such a warm, wonderful feeling. And we decided really it was the symmetry, the way everything was lined up.

- [Troy] Real quickly, just tell me a little bit about the pool house itself, and the architecture, and the design of it, how it came to be.

- [Caesar] Yeah, after Ryan looked at those plans, he made it clear that what you want to do is, he wanted to make this look like a horse stables. And so when this thing was under construction, sure enough, people were driving up here and saying, "Oh no, Caesar's building a horse barn. He's gonna have horses up there." But idea was to pick up the Arts and Craftsman style house that we had that was built in 1916, and pick up its features in the pool house. So they extended that garden. They put in the windows up the top to break it up because the pool is actually 75 feet long, 25 yards. What is it? 30 feet wide. And so it's a big, long building. He felt the garden should be an extension, really, of the house.

- Of course.

- And so, and he said, he also talked about the further you get away from the house, the more rustic you want it to be. So that stone is more rustic than some stone over on this side, that you'll see is a smaller stone. But all of it's native to Crab Orchard, the stone here.

- So moving from your symmetrical garden, and you come in underneath this pergola, which kind of creates another room of its own. And then that actually, the pergola actually leads you into yet another room. So tell me about the construction of the pergola, and how this part of the garden is created.

- Yeah, in 2005, after we had done, sort of finished the, what I call the pool garden, the symmetrical garden, we had this opening here, and obviously unbalanced. And so Ryan kept saying, "Well, we need to," and we knew we need to do something on this side to balance that room with the pool. And the pool's a big, long building. And of course, when we went to the Cotswolds, we went to Taunton, the Hestercombe probably, Gertrude Jekyll and Edwin Luytens Garden. That's probably my favorite garden in the whole world. And I love the pergola there, which overlooks a valley. It doesn't have a river in it, but it's a valley, it's gorgeous. And so Ryan said, "Well, you know, he likes that pergola so much at Hestercombe, let's just make him a pergola here." And of course then he put these cypress

- Beams up.

- Wood beams up, with the copper on top, and then he arched it, so that, and I asked him, "Why in the world would you arch that thing?" And he said, "So that when the roses and everything else get on the top, they'll flow over like an ocean." And unfortunately, right now, I've cut 'em back. About every three years I cut 'em way, way back. And so we don't have that right now that you can see. By the time you get all the plants and everything else on it, this pergola does balance the pool. And so you don't feel like you're about to tip over, one side or the other.

- Sure, sure. And then of course you've got this big perennial bed here on this side with kind of a limited palate. I mean, I see asters, and Joe Pye weed, and a few other things.

- Yeah, this was, problem is the asters, these Rachel Jackson asters, which is another wonderful story. Typical Ryan, you know, he goes to the Hermitage, and he's being taken around by the head gardener and all that. And so he said, "I'd love to have some of those Rachel Jackson asters." And says, "Well, you know, you can't take anything." And so at the end of the thing he said, "But I'm going to the bathroom, and I'll see you another time." And so Ryan, of course, took some clippings.

- Acquired.

- Yeah. Took 'em back to Decatur. And so the Rachel Jackson asters are really taking over. But you can see this herbaceous border here is really for the fall. And so all the color, the purples, and the course of the Joe Pye weed, and then there should be solidago in here. And then we've got some helianthus that you don't see right now. We've got some ginger that's coming up. But you can see there's some flocks right now. But there's always, seems like there's always something coming.

- Some progression. And then you come down these beautiful half-round stairs into another more formal space, another green space again, but with a really interesting kind of dynamic hedge back there that you don't see a lot of. We would call that maybe a pleached hedge or.

- Yeah, absolutely. And the idea here was, Ryan was not opposed to going to a garden, looking at what he liked, and then repeating it, and modifying it some. And so this is all taken after the Dumbarton Oak. At Dumbarton Oaks, they have a complete ellipse of the Carpinus, these hornbeam trees, pleached together. Of course they're much bigger. But the idea here was to sort of do a half, a demi-lune, of the hedge on the stick, you might call it. This is looking pretty good right now, 'cause we, I got a wonderful man, Ramiro Rodriguez, who helps me and he is a master at trimming.

- Get in there and trimming.

- Which takes some doing. I used to get up on a scaffold and help him, but not anymore, and he also does the box. So again, Ryan, this was 2007, so he puts in the Carpinus and then he says, "Well, you know, you need a fountain in here." And so this had been after several years, I've been working with Ryan since 2001. And I thought, well he is getting ready to give me a fountain, 'cause he said he had this fountain in his garden. And so he says, "For a small fee, you can have it." And it actually, baptismal font. And I don't know how long Ryan had had it, but anyway, it's been with us now for about, what is, 16 years. And then after that, then he puts in the green box around it, and then he says, "Well, I think we need another box around that that's hexagonal 'cause that's the shape of the baptismal font." Then he said, "I think we put these boxes in." And

- [Troy] So it's just always kind of a progression.

- [Caesar] It's a progression. It was never that he, like an architect, draw out all your plans. He may have had it in his mind, which I suspect, but it was never.

- I understand that.

- [Caesar] And it was sort of, and by the time we got to this, then I was a little bit more involved in talking with him about it. But it was a wonderful relationship. And of course, again, we've created room here, perfect for weddings, we've had a lot of weddings here. And even had an opera up there in the pool garden.

- Very nice.

- So, you know, it's a fun, it's a fun, wonderful space, really.

- Well, we've seen all of these wonderful spaces that your garden includes, but as we kind of wrap this up, I can't imagine that there's much better a place to sit than right here and look out at this incredible view.

- [Caesar] Absolutely, you know, this is, the Holston and the French Broad come together downtown, create the Tennessee River, which flowing right here. And on a clear day, you can see Mount Le Conte.

- [Troy] Oh wow.

- Ryan always said that this was God's garden, and that was Ryan's garden.

- There you go. And Caesar fits in there somewhere.

- Somewhere.

- Caesar and Dorothy fit in.

- [Caesar] I'm just a witness, I'm just a viewer.

- Well, we wanna thank you so much for allowing us to have a little glimpse into your private world. We really appreciate it.

- [Caesar] Well, it's all our pleasure. You know, we like to share this. We feel like we're just stewards of this particular place, this particular piece of land. And we've, Ryan was all about beauty, and he has certainly made a beautiful place here for us, and for everybody we can share it with. So we try to share it with everybody that we can.

- Well, thank you so much.

- So it's a pleasure.

- I wanna talk about one of the few native evergreens, and it's also one of my favorite shrubs. This is a genus called ill-ick-ee-um or ill-iss-ee-um. It should be pronounced ck, most people say ss, Illicium. It's found in the southeastern United States. And it is, turns out, it's a terrifically garden-worthy plant. Usually these are commonly referred to as some variety of anise bush, or anise tree, or anise shrub. And the reason being that, when you crack one of the leaves, it smells like licorice, or bruise it. And for that reason, here's the really great thing, deer don't touch it because they're not licorice fans, turns out. This is a variety of the species Illicium floridanum, which means Florida anise. It stays very low and spreads out like a big muffin, if you will, or a biscuit. It's really a beautiful little plant. Stays like this all year. In the spring and early summer, it has maroon starry blossoms on it. You can see there's a grouping here. It likes high shade. And once established, pretty drought tolerant, which is surprising because in the wild they tend to grow on the edges of streams and swamps. But in our gardens, it turns out they're hugely adaptable. I love this whole genus, and this particular variety is unlike anything else I've seen. It's really worth seeking out. And I'm gonna show you a couple more types that are really great to have in your own garden. I showed you Swamp Hobbit, that little bitty guy, this is the same species, but a larger variety. This is, I believe this is Halley's Comet. There are several different varieties of Florida anise that get about this size, and I'm not sure which one this is, but you can't go wrong with any of them. And this one is interesting because you can see the remnants of a flower, even though, it blooms intermittently over the summer, and that's just the very middle, but you can get a little bit of the idea of the color. It's sort of a deep maroonish pink. But you can see that it's been blooming for a while because these are ripe seed pods. And you can, it looks like star anise, does it not? And it's obviously related. So this, these are from blooms in the spring. There's a ripe one. There's one starting to ripen. There's a green one, still fat and developing. You can see that it obviously blooms over a long period of time. This is in pretty much, it's bright shade, but it gets no direct sun, this location where this plant is, and it is thriving. It's a super happy plant. Evergreen, looks great all year. Setting buds for next year. You can see these are all little flower buds that are coming on, all over the place, beautiful plant. I really think you can't go wrong planting this plant. I mentioned there were a few flavors of Illicium. This is another species called parviflorum, which means few or small flower, depending. This is another native to the southeast sort. And this particular variety, this has this gorgeous goldy-green foliage, and is called Florida Sunshine. This is a fairly young plant. This will get 10 feet tall and probably eight feet wide ultimately. And it's planted in a space where it has the room to do this. It's a gloriously beautiful plant for a shady nook, because it does like some shade. And it really, this foliage color, really brightens up a darkish spot. One of the great things about this plant is it is, in my experience, remarkably drought tolerant, once it's established. I have put these in hilltop shady gardens and they've done well. The straight species is also available, and it's, on its own is worth having. The leaf doesn't have the same color, but it's a light bright green, which is also still very attractive. Flowers on this species are not what it's grown for. It's mostly a foliage thing. Once again, completely evergreen, looks great all year round. And I also wanna say that last winter, we had a freeze like no other, and it killed mass quantities of plants all over the Southeast. And the Illicium all made it. This is after that, and the Illicium all came back like gangbusters from that. So that's another big positive in my book for this plant. I really recommend this whole genus to everybody. And they're not too hard to find. They're increasingly available in the trade, certainly worth looking at for your shaded garden.

- Well Chris, we're standing in your front yard, which is just an incredible garden of flowers, and edibles, and herbs that you have for the winged creatures that are all flying all around us. Tell me a little bit about how long this has kind of taken you to reclaim it back from, you said original turf when you moved in.

- Well yeah, it used to all be lawn, everything you see here, this was all grass. Pretty much we saw a couple hummingbirds show up, about six to eight years ago, somewhere in there. And had a couple feeders out, they showed up. Every year, we've seen a couple more. So I made the decision to turn the entire lawn into what you see now, basically a hummingbird, butterfly garden.

- [Matt] It's almost like a sanctuary, I guess, in this form.

- Exactly.

- [Matt] And ever since then, you were just kind of bit by the bug and just continued offering a safe habitat, food sources, and they just came in droves.

- [Chris] Exactly, and they haven't stopped. Every year they keep showing up. The numbers go up every year. The migratory patterns, when they show up, they know where their food source is, so they fly here and they stay here every year.

- Do you feel like you're kind of, even though you might not have the data tracking on it, but do you feel like you have some of the same families and herds that are kind of swarms, I guess, I don't even know what you call 'em, coming back to the same feeding ground, nesting grounds in the summer?

- Absolutely. Absolutely. I can tell because they're more tame than most hummingbirds. First thing I hear from people, I come over, they say you can get very close to the hummingbirds, and normally you can't do that. So I'm, that tells me they're pretty, pretty much the same ones. They're used to people. They're used to this environment.

- Gotcha.

- There's always somebody walking around, if it's not me, it's somebody else.

- [Matt] What kind of types of hummingbirds, can I ask, as far as the varieties?

- We get the ruby-throated hummingbird. That's pretty much all we'll have here is the ruby throated. The flowers is what you need to really bring them in. When they find a yard that has flowers that they like, they will eventually check out every flower in the nearby area, including the feeders. And when they find a feeder, usually they'll stick around after that, as long as you keep it out there. That's where consistency comes, as long as you keep it out there. It's very important to keep it clean. You wanna make sure there's always food for them. And as long as they have that, they will continue to show up.

- They won't move on.

- Exactly.

- So the flowers almost kind of serve as a big billboard, big X target, they're coming down, looking for more.

- Yes.

- They'll find the food. And that's how you've really kept these families around.

- Yes, absolutely. Yes.

- Fantastic. Well, I'd love to take a walk around a little bit and kind of talk about some of the maybe most popular plantings in the garden. Sure, of course.

- All right. So Chris, as we're kind of walking around the garden, I'm just amazed by the number of hummingbirds that are just swarming all around to the different plants and to the different feeders that you have here. It's just incredible. I wanna talk a little bit more about some of the flowers that you've used to kind of act as that big signpost to 'em, and kind of attract them in and use 'em as feed. Can you tell me a little bit about this guy right here, what we're looking at?

- Well, this is a Tithonia, or a Mexican sunflower, very attractive, not only to the hummingbirds, but to butterflies, bees, they love this plant. What makes it even more special is that you can grow this in any type of soil. They can even take part shade too.

- Wow. Huge.

- So you can plant this anywhere, gigantic. And you start 'em by seed early in the year, whether you start it inside or direct sow it. It'll be this big before the end of the growing season.

- And what I found fascinating, you were telling me here, is that I always, there's a lot of maybe a misconception that hummingbirds were only attracted to tubular flower type plants. That if I wanted to attract hummingbirds, I gotta only plant tubular flowers. But you're saying that's not the case in this way.

- No, they love this flower. They like this. They love zinnias. The celosia they're very fond of. It's not just the tubular flowers. They see in ultraviolet. People can't see ultraviolet light, but hummingbirds can, so can bees and butterflies. So this is gonna look a lot more brilliant to them than it does us. Not just red tubular flowers, but other flowers have the same properties.

- Orange, blues. Gotcha.

- Exactly. And there may be a higher proportion of red tubular flowers that have good ultraviolet reflective properties, but some others do too, and it's not all just red tube flowers.

- [Matt] Fascinating. So you almost kind of get secondary benefits, not only good as cut flowers for use inside, but what you're saying, you just, this is also covered in swallowtail butterflies, looking around here without scaring 'em away, just beautiful swallowtails along with bumblebees, honeybees, hummingbirds. So it's just a broad range of attractants.

- [Chris] Yes, absolutely.

- [Matt] Along with the Tithonia here out in your garden, we also have some blue lobelia, you mentioned celosia.

- [Chris] Celosia, very nice, very popular, very colorful. Not only attractive to the hummingbirds, but it's good to look at. Easy to grow, another plant that's not very picky about soil, almost effortless.

- [Matt] Gotcha, reseeds itself, almost, from year to year.

- [Caesar] Every year. Absolutely, yes.

- [Matt] You mentioned black and blue salvia.

- [Chris] Yeah, that's a great one for your hummingbirds. It's almost magical, the effect it has on it.

- [Matt] And that's a tubular, dark type flower as well.

- Yes, it is, yes.

- [Matt] And so, Chris, it's obvious that not only do the hummingbirds enjoy the flowers in your garden, but they're also very much attracted to your feeders as well, and you can kind of see that just from what's in the background here. They're absolutely just swarming on this feeder, just chirping away, you know, it sounds amazing. Tell me a little bit about best practices, what you've found, in your feeding solution and how you manage that.

- [Chris] Here in Tennessee, we'll have 90 degree weather, a lot of humidity. That's a recipe for mold, mildew, things you don't want in your feeder. So it's very important to have a clean feeder. Don't let that sugar water go bad. Replace it every two, three days if you can. If not, just take it in, don't replace it, just make some fresh. One part sugar, four parts water is what you make. Dyes have been found not to be good for hummingbirds.

- [Matt] Not even doing dyes, clear.

- [Chris] No dye at all, just sugar water. That's all you need.

- [Matt] Along with placing the feeders throughout the garden, you just have 'em here on shepherd hooks, kind of spaced out. No really rhyme or reason to it, just kind of implanted next to your garden for best viewing practices.

- [Chris] That's the number one right there, so you can see 'em all. Another thing too, you'll notice the songbird feeders are kind of outside of this area.

- [Matt] Yeah, you mentioned something about a little competition or something.

- [Chris] Yeah, exactly. The hummingbirds get very aggressive this time of year. When they're migrating, they're competing for the food. If you watch 'em, you'll see they do a lot of fighting.

- [Matt] Amongst themselves even.

- [Chris] Amongst themselves for the food.

- [Matt] And the songbirds, you said.

- [Chris] And with the songbirds. They will chase away cardinals. They will chase away finches. I've seen 'em chase hawks. They will chase anything.

- Wow.

- [Chris] So that's why I have all the birds set out to the side. So it's not just for the looks, it's for the, for that reason too, to keep the songbirds happy.

- [Matt] Gotcha, so you're kind of separating your songbird feed from your hummingbird feed.

- Exactly.

- Had no idea that that was the case. They're so cute and cuddly. But it can get a little territorial when it comes to food.

- Absolutely, yes, yes.

- Like we all can. And then along with the gardening aspect of it, I could tell we're talking, you have a similar passion in photography. Tell me a little bit about that and how that has kind of come into play around your home here.

- [Chris] Well, a lot of that ties directly in with this. I like to do a lot of macro photography. And so having somewhere where I can walk out the door and just start taking pictures is nice.

- [Matt] And macro photography meaning?

- [Chris] Very tiny, very tiny photographs.

- Closeups?

- Exactly. Very closeups. Half inch or smaller.

- Wow.

- [Chris] So on the flowers you'll see again, not only the hummingbirds, a lot of bees, a lot of insects, a lot of small things that you don't notice until you start walking around here.

- [Matt] Being quiet and standing up close is some, I imagine, some of the best practices for getting that perfect shot.

- [Chris] Exactly, exactly.

- [Matt] Where can viewers learn a little bit more about your photography? You mentioned Instagram as a source.

- [Chris] Instagram, I'm on Instagram as @birdsbugsplants.

- [Matt] There's no and, just @birdsbugsplants.

- @birdsbugsplants. Yes.

- Fantastic. I just wanna thank you so much for your time and attention to your yard.

- [Narrator] For inspiring garden tours, growing tips, and garden projects, visit our website at volunteergardner.org, and find us on these platforms.